Frogs

It’s both startling and astonishing how the weather behaves strangely nowadays. In the initial days of March, when summer was supposed to be ushered in gradually, the rains came pouring in, like an unexpected visitor whom one does not know exactly how to receive—-had it came for a bountiful afternoon chatter over bristling cups of coffee or had just got to stop by due to a vital intent?

And now while May slowly loses its days to another month, the rains are hard to come by and the temperature rises even when night falls so deep into midnight, when it is supposed to be cool and breezy outside, and of course in the living room.

Strange weather, really.

So the ground are so dry nowadays that some afternoons ago I decided to weed out the backyard with unwanted growths, having no troubles whatsoever with muddy soil that get stuck in the slippers I wear. I had once popped the idea of landscaping the whole area with Bermuda grasses to my wife—-about a week ago—- but even I had scoffed when she mentioned to me that it would cost nearly ten thousand bucks to have it done by gardeners from the plant store across the highway. What do you actually call these establishments that sells plants and flowers in pots. I actually have no idea as of this moment.

So for now, the bermudas or carabao grasses would have to wait and I’ve got to contend myself of laboring towards manually eliminating the weeds for now (which can actually grow towards knee level when left unattended for so long) and my oh my, it was so painstaking an activity that my muscles ache all night long after that, and when I woke up the next morning, I could barely walk.

When I was scything the weeds, I had discovered that frogs were ensconced tightly in some nooks and corners of the waterless ground. I noticed this sight immediately for it was certainly a bit of an aberration to see frogs while water is so absent in an area. Frogs means water or rain. And rain means tadpoles and croaking reverberations in the night.

I then wonder how these amphibians can keep up with the arid surroundings even when I know that usually they soak themselves in cool water almost all the time. To be sure, it must have meant that frogs have developed adaptation schemes to combat queer weather situation and atypical habitats. Now perhaps there comes the answer to the momentary query of where do frogs goes when the rains haven’t come for a long, long time. They hide themselves in darkened nooks and crevices in the ground, behind and under mossy stones and shady plants, over misty soil where sunrays could not dry up thoroughly.

This reminds me of an episode of one of my favorite television show when I was a kid, Life On Earth. One unforgettable discussion there was this very strange looking fresh-water fish who can survive for months and months to come even when the ground become so dry that the soil is caked all throughout, like in a span of desert that is so cruel to any shrubbery.

I remember how the host Mr. David Attenborough—-he with the effervently musky voice—had dug about a couple of feet into the dry ground and grabbed a morsel of mud formation which he then dropped into a huge basin full of water. And then lo and behold, the pack of solidified mud started to move and slowly a funny looking fish swam away like it was just another day in the river.

It was so amazing how a water creature could survive for so long without water, breathing dry air and being stuck in cakes of mud like a frozen caveman; in order to wait for the rain to finally come and when the water rises again, the strange fish wiggles away into the world where it usually thrive on, and start another cycle in its life span.

Could you imagine a fish surviving out of the water for far too long, like half a year at a time? I couldn’t. But I remember that there was one fish that could actually do that. Therefore presenting an exception to that famous euphemism of being a “fish out of a water”, like I am so miserable now that I am like a fish out of the water.

Amazing survivability this fish has. And also those frogs in our backyard.